You can say something is excruciatingly funny or that a comedy is excruciating. “But the root sense, all pain, is: ‘to crucify.” The Lain ex functions as an intensive. Cruciare ‘to crucify’ has the generalized sense to torture. That’s from John Ciardi’s 1980 A Browser’s Dictionary (123). The 2024 Merriam-Webster largely agrees with this saying under etymology: “derived from Latin excruciatus, past participle of excruciare “to torture,” from ex- “out of, from” and cruciare “to torment, crucify,” from cruc-, crux “cross” — related to cross, crucial, crucify “Excruciating” (Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/excruciating. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024). But Merriam-Webster give us the direct connection of “out of the cross” which makes any Confessional Lutheran pick up his ears, and now we’re to the excruciating 21st century. Continue reading
The Excruciating 21st Century
Poor, Poor Pitiful Me
It’s not often that I prefer a remake of a song to the golden days of the 70’s. I first heard Linda Ronstadt’s “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me” while drinking beer in a car with a college friend on the banks of the San Marcos river. I didn’t recall ever hearing it. Linda in ’78, wasn’t the first to record it. Another band did in ’76 but not to much notice. I was satisfied with Linda’s version till I heard Terri Clark’s version in 1996. Give it a listen here. 
“It’s 2024. Do you know (or care) from whom your kid’s are getting their tech?”
This is a play on the Public Service Announcement I heard from time to time growing up in the in the later 60s and mid-70s. “It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?” You’re going to think this blog is about autism or Asperger’s when it’s really about AI. Continue reading
21st Century High Place – Life.Church
I’ve had my eye on this “church” ever since they bought the building Kohls vacated, tore half of it down, and rebuilt a big box to replace the big box retailer that was there. This really is a Big Box Church. I use ‘church’ in the broadest sense that can be used. There is not one single thing, object, or art in the movie theater auditorium indicating this is a sanctuary, a holy place, a refuge. No altar, no cross, no pulpit, no lectern. It did have the markers of today’s nondenominational churches. Huge screens, big band, big sound, and lots of light action. They had the markers of Big Evangelical too. Many pastors almost all of them interchangeable with the Big Kahuna. But then something curious happened. Continue reading
Tantamount to Sacrilege
This Good Friday blog had its genesis in my pastor’s remark in a Lenten sermon, but it sprung to life while on a walk somedays later. The first sermonic thought I had had in 15 months. No exaggeration. Before retirement, I had thought my mind would be pungent, abundant, extravagant with sermon ideas from the lack of preparing them. But nothing, nada, zip, zero in over a year. Then like the exploding in heaven purple tree in Robin William’s 1998 film “What Dreams May Come”, BOOM! There it was. Continue reading
Resisting Artificial Intelligence
The above is the title of Harper’s July 2024 issue. I sure don’t hear many raising this hue and cry. According to Benjamín Labatut’s essay “The God’s of Logic – Before and after artificial intelligence”, we ought to be listening to Geoffrey Hinton. Labatut says Hinton is widely considered the godfather of AI who “has mutated from an evangelist of a new form of reason into a prophet of doom.” He himself credits the change to “the realization that we had in fact, not replicated our intelligence, but created a superior one” (28). Continue reading
Just as I Suspicioned
I heard my mother-in-law say now and again that she ‘suspicioned’ this or that. I always thought that was a made up word. My Merriam-Webster says it is a word though they consider it “chiefly dialectal”. I always liked the word because you knew what it meant and it was apropos to many things. Continue reading
If not for the Laughing I’d be crying
Give us 18 Minutes, we’ll give you the world
The Satellite News Network (SNC) debuted in 1982 with this slogan. It would be more accurate to say that if you give them 18 minutes they will give you their world, the world as they see it, believe it, edit it. The internet does that instantaneously and overwhelmingly. Continue reading